Every man thinks about getting a tattoo at one time in his life. I’ll admit I’ve tossed the idea around. But this I would seriously, seriously consider doing.
Who’s with me?
Monthly Archive for April, 2006
Ladies and Gentlemen, you are now reading the words of an official Ashland Inc. employee (as of 5-15). That’s right, I have been hired on as a permanent employee. For those of you that didn’t know, I have been working as a contractor for Ashland for the past 9 months. This basically means they pay more for my services, but I don’t get any benefits, insurance, paid holidays, or anything. They can fire me with a wave of a finger. But now I get it all. Even the cheaper gym membership. Woo hoo. It’s kind of a weird situation amongst the other employees. On one had then other Ashland employees are congratulating me and welcoming me into their glorious empire. While the fraternity of contractors are congratulating me but giving me the evil eye that says they should have been “the one”. I really shouldn’t but I feel kinda bad when me, a young fresh out of college bachelor, is getting bumped up from a contractor to employee instead of the guy with a brand new kid or the 50+ year old. But, such is the battlefield that is Corporate America.
Pictures from the Spring Game and Nick’s Bday cookout should be up hopefully later tonight. I’ve been having problems with my PC that I hope to have resolved soon. Who knew that removing your DVI cable from your monitor could cause a geometry mismatch in the # of sectors on your hard drive…. yea…
So it’s been a little while but we have some picture updates. Yesterday was Nick’s 21st birthday. We went out to Brazenhead and had a great time. Nick had an even better time 
Anyway, the pics should explain most of the night. Going through these ones made me realize how much I need to upgrade my gallery so that I can add comments and what not becuase quite a few of the pictures could use some greaaaaat taglines.
Click and off you go
I also FINALLY updated the Fiesta Bowl pics with a few of the extra’s my Dad took. Mostly there are just a few more of Bree, Chad and Adam getting painted up.
Check them out here.
Lastly, I’m trying to get an uploader utility working so that other people can upload their pics and have them posted. Gina and Julie took some pics from Nick’s party last night that I’m sure turned out awesome. I made an editor’s decision and withheld a few of the more graphic pictures that took place once Nick was done for. I didn’t want to embarass him publicly but I’m more than willing to share. Just post a comment and I’ll get them to you.
-Out
Net Neutrality - An extremely well summarized article given both side’s view on the argument of Net Neutrality
I don’t know how many of you realize this or not, but Jack Bauer is the man of all men. He can do things that Chuck Norris and McGuyver don’t even dream of doing. I’ve watched every season of 24 and it just keeps getting better. It’s one of the few non-commical/cartoon shows I watch religiously on television. Each season Jack Bauer lives the worst day of his life (and the rest of free America for that matter). I’m constantly amazed how the writers can come up with new plots that don’t seem lame. At least to the regular 24 viewer. I could be reasoned that if you explained to me the plot of a show where the president was aiding terrorists to get chemical weapons and doing it all for the good of the country, I’d say that show would never last. But 24 makes it work. The suspense and action is so kick-ass that small things like plot, dialog and technical truth don’t really matter anymore. Hence the comic I found while browsing the interenets.
Enjoy.
So today is Friday here at Ashland Inc since we get tomorrow (Good Friday) off. I’ve often told people that working for “Corporate America” is a lot like the next level of high school. Not really college, because I’d be willing to say that only 50 or 60 % of the employees that work here went to college. Let me give you some examples of how I’ve encountered extended school life here at Ashland.
- Short work week’s are often accompanied by less work getting done during 4 days than normally would over a 4 day period on a full work week.
- You can plan that the parking lot on a Friday morning will generally be much more vacant than on a Wednesday, usually due to the large percentage of workers that take Friday off, or just decide to come in late.
- The topics of discussion in the men’s bathroom are just as elementary and inappropriate as they are in a 8th grade locker room.
- The first floor of Ashland can easily be identified as the kindergarten of our school of work. This week the whole floor is decorated with colored eggs, young animal cutouts, streamers and flowers. There is even a picture and sign on one of the walls that says “April Showers” and then on the other end of the room there is a corresponding sign that reads “Brings May Flowers”. BUT, instead of just having flowers, someone actually made a large cutout of The Mayflower. Yes. The ship the landed in America with the pilgrims. Who comes up with this stuff?
So yea, I’m getting the full Corporate America experience. At lunch today a co-worker told me about an interesting game I’d like to play the next time a group of us go out to The Olive Garden. I shall explain:
Name of the Game: Cheese Chicken
Number of players: just 2 of you or as many as you can seat at a table
Location: Any Olive Garden Restaurant
Requirements: Cheese Chicken requires that all participants order a salad
How to play: It is common knowledge that at Olive Garden you get as much salad and breadsticks as you please. I believe this is 25% of the reason a large portion of people go there. Anyway, when the waiter brings over your large bowl of salad you will be asked if you would like some grated cheese on it. Someone will reply “of course” and they will begin to grade cheese over your salad and inform you to say “when” once there is enough. This is the signal that the game of Cheese Chicken has begun. It is simple from here out. The first one to say “when” is the looser and is beaten to death by breadsticks. The waiter may begin to get anxious or get worried looks on his/her face, but do not falter. Cheese Chicken is a game of wits.
I am very much looking forward to playing this game.
Yes I’m that big of a nerd. Do you know what you were doing when it was 1:02:03 on 04/05/06. I was working. And I’ll always remember it. I guess technically it should have been 12 hours before hand when I was sleeping. My geekdom knows no ends. Do you know what the actual definition of the word geek is?
Pronunciation: ‘gEk
Function: noun
Etymology: probably from English dialect geek, geck fool, from Low German geck, from Middle Low German
1 : a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake
Can’t say I should be identifying with that. Maybe there is some rite of passage that I don’t know about in order to become a geek. Hmmmm.
Nothing much has happened recently. Baseball started: I am happy. Reds got owned: I am sad. But today Bronson Arroyo is going to show if he was really worth a Willy Mo, so we’ll see.
Logging in to post today my site was running really slow. I can’t say if its Ashland’s network, my server, or wordpress but let’s hope it is temporary. I was browsing my webstats and notices quite a few new referals from the ip 72.14.203.104/ guess I’m been discovered by the crawling bots. Or maybe google picked it up when I applied for their beta of google analytics. Who knows.
This past weekend Mike, Matt and I went apartment hunting and 5 hours later filled out an application for a place. Assuming everything goes, we’ll be living just off Sawmill at the Arbors of Dublin come next fall. It’s a pretty sweet little setup (can you say cathedral ceilings and a fireplace?).
Anyway, thats all I’ve got. Happy 1:2:3 4/5/6
